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Comment by LargeTomato | Hacker News Reader

I don't know of any technology that can respond to the injury of its passengers by sending them to the hospital. That doesn't mean it can't happen, it just isn't a reality yet. I hope it gets there and most importantly I believe it can get there.

If it fails 10% or the time that sounds like a great start and I hope they can improve it! 10% failure rate seems like a great process that could be improved.

Again, I'm interested in why capitalism makes you pessimistic about technological advancement. Capitalism seems pretty good at advancing technology. Let me ask you a question, why do you think "capitalism" can get such a system to 10% failure and then stop improving forever? That seems pretty random to me. I'm interested in why you think that!

Also, why do you think it's a zero sum game? E.g. we can cure cancer and make self driving cars better at the same time! It's pretty sweet actually.

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https://support.apple.com/en-us/108374

It is imminently within the realm of possibility that a smart watch can, with minimal human intervention, redirect the current driverless vehicle to an emergency room. I would not be surprised if the iWatch->phone->CarPlay integration were to expose this path in the next or second-to-next major iOS revision.

> technology that can respond

You don't think it's pretty easy for a Waymo car to monitor its passengers for unresponsiveness? For speech asking for help? For mention of "take me to the hospital"?

Seems pretty easy to me. Would surprise me if some of this was not already in the programming.

> Capitalism seems pretty good at advancing technology.

Capitalism is good at providing 'efficiency', nothing more nothing less. It's a dumb (as in not smart not necessarily stupid) filter on economic activity.

I think what they are referring to is that such a system does not prioritize reducing failure rates to zero, it prioritizes reducing costs to zero - 10% is probably an arbitrary lower limit, but the cost of the court fees, medical bills, and manufacturing loss should be greater than the cost of developing and deploying the technology that can reliably reduce rates below X amount.

It's a fairly ruthless algorithm that will justify millions of deaths based upon economics.

Compounding the simple issue above, is when the system attempts to increase efficiency by lowering the cost of legal/medical repercussions e.g. by with-holding blame, fines, and economic relevancy rather than by improving the technology.

E.g. if only 100 people can afford to use a technology then a 1% failure rate is statistically easy to achieve, and efficiently requires very little testing. Applied to a population of millions however that is potentially a mass genocide.

Capitalism has a very dark side, for those willing to look the truth in the face, like with any tool, it can and will be wielded in terrible ways.

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